Crowdsourced farmer data for new publication collected using ClimMob

Published on:

Community of Practice:

Large-scale experimentation by farmers has the power to reveal differences among crop varieties that are important for helping them cope with challenges such as climate change. In a recent publication (https://www.pnas.org/content/116/10/4194) in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [USA]), the team led by Jacob van Etten of Bioversity provided analysis of the findings of farmers in Ethiopia, India and Nicargua who tested diverse crop varieties at a large scale. Using the “citizen science” approach in collaboration with Bioversity and partners, farmers conducted more than 12,400 experiments, each of which involved comparing three crop varieties from a larger set. The authors and their farmer collaborators “show the potential of crowdsourced citizen science to generate insights into variety adaptation, recommend adapted varieties, and help smallholder farmers respond to climate change.” The approach utilizes the ClimMob app (https://climmob.net), which has recently been upgraded as part of a CCRP-funded project.